Santa Cruz del Islote is a magical place. A population of up to 1,200 live on an island the size of two football fields in the middle of the Caribbean, making it one of the most densely populated islands on the planet

Santa Cruz del Islote could have come from a book by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It is magical realism: eighteen families live in 97 houses, there is a school, a restaurant that functions as a port, and a small square with a cross in the middle gives the island – located across from the Gulf of Morrosquillo in the department of Bolívar in Colombia – its name.

The economy is based on fishing and services including cleaning, cooking, tourism guides, which locals provide to the luxurious hotels in neighbouring islands. There is a strong community spirit here – a family who needs help can count on the support of its neighbours.

The Colombian capital has been a mecca for street artists since graffiti was decriminalised in 2011. Businesses commission artists, celebrities leave their tag, and you can even join a tour of iconic works

More than 10,000 people take part in the Black and White carnival, which has its origins in a mix of Andean, Amazonian and Pacific cultural expressions, celebrated every year between the end of December and the first week of January in San Juan de Pasto, south-west Colombia.

A green-and-red flag flies over a cluster of bamboo and tarpaulin tents on the frontline of an increasingly deadly struggle for land and the environment in Colombia’s Cauca Valley.

It is the banner for what indigenous activists are calling the “liberation of Mother Earth”, a movement to reclaim ancestral land from sugar plantations, farms and tourist resorts that has gained momentum in the vacuum left by last year’s peace accord between the government and the leftwing guerrillas who once dominated the region – ending, in turn, the world’s longest-running civil war.